July 26, 2009

Now, Gates knows there's an audio recording. I've got to assume Crowley lied, completely made up that "your mama" stuff. Because otherwise, I would have to believe that an utter fool is a Harvard professor.

Ok, I have not weighed in on what I think actually happened here. I believe Mr. Gates, who is not a young man and had just returned from a trip in China, had a melt down and behaved awfully. Officer Crowley, who has an extra obligation to diffuse a confrontation given that he was on the job, was on the receiving end of this meltdown and over-reacted. I suspect neither men want the tapes released. It caught them both at one of their worst moments. (BTW, didn't they make a movie about this a few years ago?)

President Obama made a mistake at the end of his press conference by using the term "stupidly." It was unfair and it has cost him politically. But, he did the country a service and politically helped himself since that mistake by taking it back and trying to promote reconciliation. The right wing press instead of taking their political winnings off the table and moving on will probably continue to beat this dead horse until they give back most of the winnings. (This is what happened with Rev. Wright.) After all, it is now pretty clear that it is the Hannity's and Limbaugh's on the right that are the biggest race hustlers.

I asked how he felt when he learned that Crowley was the one who gave mouth-to-mouth resuscitation to Reggie Lewis, the black Celtics basketball star, in a vain attempt to save his life after a heart attack in 1993. He replied: “I don’t stereotype. I never saw him as the head of the Ku Klux Klan. Maybe he was just having a bad day.”

So according to you Gates and Obama are completely innocent and not in any way fomenting racial animus, the cop is the bad guy and somehow Hannity and Limbaugh are to blame for what Gates and Obama did?

That sounds like completely level-headed thinking and not at all like partisan posturing and complete ass-covering....Not at all.

Okay. Because I am not taking Kerouac's advice, and am in fact hung up on syntax, let me point out what has been pointed out before:

Homonyms "diffuse" and "defuse".

The word you want here is "defuse". Think of disarming a bomb by pulling the fuse out of it. Not "diffuse" which you learned about in a high school science class when the teacher squirted perfume in the air and after a moment the people across the room could smell it.

He just doesn't think that having an understandable meltdown due to jet lag and illness (because hadn't he caught something?) means that a man has to take responsibility for his actions and admit he was wrong.

Crowley stated publically, already, that he was unsure how much of what Gates said would be heard on the audiotapes - not an unlikely occurence given the situation. Gates is betting that he wasn't heard on the tapes IMO.

I have no doubt that Gates, after a long trip and slightly ill, simply had a world class bad day. But, his bad day isn't Crowley's fault either.

When my worksite had safety training, the officers gave us one clear message: In an emergency, don't argue with the officers. If they say drop, drop.

Now, post incident, we can all say it wasn't much of an emergency, but then, neither is a simple traffic stop and officers have been killed doing those.

There are two sides to this one, but, that doesn't mean that there isn't a good man on both sides of the issue.

Hmm, I think the great reconciliation meeting should be postponed until Gates is well recovered from the cold he picked up in China. We wouldn't want some bizarre cosmic joke to result in Joe Biden being president.

“Does it sound logical that I would talk about the mother of a big white guy with a gun?” he asked. “I’m 5-7 and 150 pounds. I don’t walk on ice, much less (expletive) with some cop in my kitchen. I don’t want another hip replacement.”

Oh. My. Goodness. This from the guy who admits that he started screaming at the "big white guy with a gun" and calling him a racist with the very first words out of his mouth?

Of course not, Dr. Gates. No one would ever presume that you would act so illogically as to insult the "big white guy with a gun."

You said that Gates and Obama were merely tired or misinformed, i.e., they were not really responsible for their actions or there was some kind of valid excuse for their actions.

On the other hand, you came down hard on the officer who had an "extra obligation." And then you doubled down by drawing Hannity and Limbaugh into an incident in which neither of them had any involvement.

You may claim that I "can't read," but I read what you wrote quite clearly. Your problem is that you're trying to walk away from what you said.

I have a theory about Professor Gates. He is 57 years old which puts his birth year at 1952. He grew up in West Virginia. He missed the civil rights efforts by a half dozen or more years and I think it highly unlikely that he was called the word that only african americans can use on a regular basis. If at all. His sterotyping of the police is not based on "Good Times" but on "Mississippi Burning" or dozens and dozens of other films which depicted the days of hatred that he missed and the days of resistance he was too young to have witnessed first hand. He is hopelessly middle class and, as observed, an utter fool. And a very angry one bent on manufacturing racial stife where it doesn't exist so that his "field" of study gets another tank of gas. He didn't participate in the struggles of the 1960s and he is dying to scuffle with "the man" from his current safe perch. He is an utter fool and a probably coward. John Lewis, a real civil rights hero, would never have behaved in this way. He had the balls to walk across a bridge knowing what awaited him on the other side. He didn't whine.

I sincerely hope that Sgt. Crowley doesn't make the mistake of accepting an invitation to the White House to have a beer with Gates and Obama. He'd be outnumbered two-to-one by professional politicians. They will skin him alive. When the White House calls he should just say, "Thank you very much for your kind invitation, but I have to wash my hair that night and rearrange my sock drawer."

This whole incident reminds me a Family Circus cartoon from years back. The father is standing over the two boys who have obviously just been fighting. The older boy is defending himself to his father.

The caption?

"He started it by hitting me back."

Whatever you think of the officer's arrest, it's clear that NONE of what followed would have occurred if not for Gates instigating the incident. Ultimately all blame for what followed must therefore fall squarely on his shoulders because we don't even get to whether or not an arrest should have been made if not for the fact that Gates doubled down on his initial stupidity by trying to play to the crowd from his front porch.

You can claim that the officer had no right to make an arrest, and we can argue about that til Doomsday. But that's not even a secondary argument. It's a tertiary one. You have to get through both Gates' initial racial stereotyping of the officer and through his decision to continue to harangue the officer about racism once it was clear that the officer was conducting a legitimate investigation of a 911 call before we even get to the arrest.

Anyone who tries claim equivalent culpability between the two parties has given up any shred of credibility on the subject.

Darcy said... Try again, OhioAnne. One of them basically called the other a racist.

Even good men make mistakes.

And some times even good people are too embarrassed to admit it.

I agree that Obama had no business in getting into this in his press conference. In addition to it not being something a president [i]should[/i] do about a local issue, it put a spotlight on a situation making it even more difficult for the principals to 'walk back' from their previous positions.

Gates was tired, ill and annoyed at having to deal with a broken door .... and then a cop shows up having been called by a neighbor. He reacted badly. Not a smart thing to do, but a human one.

Crowley had no idea when he went into the situation what he would find and he was met with an uncooperative resident.

Without Obama getting involved, each gets a chance to find out about each other in the post incident review. Each maybe can see the other person's POV a bit. They might have worked it out between them.

When Obama put himself into the mix (sorry, no way it wasn't a planted question), it became a "teachable moment" instead of a situation to be resolved. The participants' "sides" - instead of being in flux - became rigid.

Obama needs work on his conflict resolution skills before real nukes are involved.

Can you continue to apply the label "good" to them while they're actively inflating those mistakes to acts of evil?

If Crowley simply cracked (something we should all be able to understand), it's one thing for him to not want to admit a mistake, and another for him to double-down, as he's been doing, and try to turn this into a career move.

Even Juan Williams said this is not about race but about Gates acting nuts even when the cops held up the handcuffs and said stop or you are going downtown.

I was willing to give Gates the benefit of doubt (I always assumed he was an asshole but he should get some deference in his own home) but the fact support that Gates crossed that invisable line and the cops did what they needed to do.

Enjoy that beer Skip. And thank you "Mr. Chips" for helping derail Obamacare.

"If Crowley simply cracked (something we should all be able to understand), it's one thing for him to not want to admit a mistake, and another for him to double-down, as he's been doing, and try to turn this into a career move."

This is one of the reasons I have to part company with those who claim that Gates was merely tired or overwrought or whatever. Since the moment Crowley first knocked on his door, he has been acting the part of the race-hustler. From screaming about "This is how a black man in America gets treated" before he was ever arrested, to the self-serving interviews he gave to his daughter and the website that he edits, to his disingenuous claims that he will accept Crowley's apology provided he comes crawling on his hands and knees so that he can hector him.

Those are not the acts of a scholar and a gentleman that his defenders would have us believe him to be. Those are the acts of a self-promoting race hustler a la Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton.

Do people just think that Lynn Sweet, a well-respected journo who has been dogging Obama from Chicago for years and basically broke the whole Rezko story way back when, is just straight up lying when she says her question was not at all planted?

The White House chooses people in advance to ask questions, but doesn't tell them what to ask. Is that so hard to believe?

Also, has Althouse read any of Gates' books or seen the PBS stuff? I thought the documentary series was quite good... a bit more work went into it than taking pictures of coffee shops... do folks also believe that Gates is a total fraud? That graduating summa from Yale, getting your PHD in English, etc., is just something that gets handed out to undeserving minorities? You might not like his attitude toward this whole incident, but do you discount education out of hand? Althouse, you are a frackin college professor, for christ's. If you don't believe in the system, why don't you go into the private sector? Is this all just professional jealousy?

Michael points out a truth about humans. When they are too quickly promoted, without first suffering their share of hard knocks, then they rarely comprehend that all their citizens are necessary to take the most valuable from each thereby totaling a more complete human experience. We need men like John Lewis and men like Skip Gates, and Women like Sonia Sotomayor, and women like Sarah Palin. The Tilt Light goes on when the ones recently promoted attempt to close off all future promotions. That is called a Tyranny and is the opposite of a Democratic Republican government that we inherited in the USA. The biggest current danger is of an Iranian or a Venezuelan election, or the planned Honduran election which are all methods of rigging the results of future elections so as to cut off all new promotions. Those methods are used by all of Obama's current best friends. Acorn like "community organizers" and their rigged votes ARE therefore the enemy we face today. And we cannot expect help from the Media to report any truth anymore.

"But Sgt Crowley was too young to watch it. The show went off the air about 30 years ago didn't it?"

It's still in re-runs today on cable. But it's telling that he would make a comment like that. Does this sound like a guy who's truly looking to move beyond the incident, recognizes his own culpability in the incident and settle differences over a beer? Or does it sound like a guy who is still looking to milk this for every ounce of racial grievance he can find?

I fail to see even the slightest hint of the former, but I see a whole lot of the latter.

And why can't you expend one post among dozens on gates to at least tangentially address the issue of police relations with local communities? Here in Brooklyn, people are talking about Shem Walker, not Skip Gates.

Althouse said: "Now, Gates knows there's an audio recording. I've got to assume Crowley lied, completely made up that "your mama" stuff. Because otherwise, I would have to believe that an utter fool is a Harvard professor."

Where has it been reported that there is a complete audio recording of the interaction between Gates and Crowley? My understanding is what they are talking about releasing, are tapes of the 911 call, and of some sort of radio communication between Crowley and other officers.

You seem to think that being educated is some kind of proof that a person isn't a jackass or a racist. Do we really have to go through all the examples across this country of highly educated people in this country who are one, the other or both?

Even if I grant you his scholarship, that has absolutely no bearing on this incident whatsoever. Or is your position that in any conflict the guy with the higher degree wins no matter how wrong he is?

As to the differences between the professor's and the cops' version of events, I confess I've been wary of taking Henry Louis Gates at his word ever since, almost two decades back, the literary scholar compared the lyrics of the rap group 2 Live Crew to those of the Bard of Avon. "It's like Shakespeare's 'My love is like a red, red rose,'" he declared, authoritatively, to a court in Fort Lauderdale.

As it happens, "My luv's like a red, red rose" was written by Robbie Burns, a couple of centuries after Shakespeare. Oh, well. 16th century English playwright, 18th century Scottish poet: What's the diff? Evidently being within the same quarter-millennium and right general patch of the North-East Atlantic is close enough for a professor of English and Afro-American Studies appearing as an expert witness in a court case. Certainly no journalist reporting Gates' testimony was boorish enough to point out the misattribution.

"My point is simply the average 37 year-old person would not be thoroughly familiar with cathcphrases from this TV show."

I didn't mean to imply I was making light of your point, only to point out that although it's possible, it's really just another way of Gates playing the race card.

He's implying that Crowley's only knowledge of how black people speak is limited to watching a black sitcom from the 70s - much the same way that our Leftist friends here repeatedly claim that conservatives don't really have any black or gay friends.

Gates is showing just what a racist he really is. His every word drips with condescending stereotypes of white people, and this comment is just another example.

I would assume it would be second nature to Crowley to conduct himself in these situations as a person who knew he was being taped- which isn't particularly fair. Gates should have been informed he was being taped as well.

It's summer and so conducive to leisurely activities, but I got over my need to dissect this kind of thing at length - oh about the time I didn't need to pull any more last minute term papers out of my butt.

Going on about it feels like a combination of going back to the womb and reading the horoscope section which is depressing me, so I'm quarantining myself on the subject from this point forward.

Skip Gates hates white people so much he married a white woman. Ah sure, that proves nothing. He's probably a racist.

Meanwhile, people who think nothing of using phrases like "shucking and jiving" and "race hustler" (African American studies, unlike European History, say, is just a scam to "hustle" money from Universities, right?)-- these people are as far from racist as can be. No, it's these uppity blacks, who think they're all that, who are the real racists.

"My point is simply the average 37 year-old person would not be thoroughly familiar with cathcphrases from this TV show."

I'm 34, and I know all about Kid DYNOMITE! and Janet Jackson's special guest appearances and how one season James was there, and then he died between seasons or something and things kept getting worse, but then Thelma met a star basketball player who was on his way to the NBA--but shattered his knee before making the big time and how Michael was always just about to go black power radical but never quite did.

I don't remember mamma jokes, though. That show had a pretty strong, positive view of women and wouldn't have put up with it.

"Meanwhile, people who think nothing of using phrases like "shucking and jiving" and "race hustler" (African American studies, unlike European History, say, is just a scam to "hustle" money from Universities, right?)-- these people are as far from racist as can be."

Do dogs start howling when you start to whine in that ultra-high register?

We've already been over this "race-hustler" ground before. If you are using race to advance yourself and as a blunt weapon against those of differing ethnicities, then you're a race hustler regardless of the color of your skin.

What would you call someone like that? Or, in your world, do such people not exist?

There has been discussion at Powerline that the questions were known to Obama before the Press Conference. Remember near the end of the press conference when President Obama called out the name -- "Steve Koff" -- but another reporter named Steven Thomma, of McClatchy, heard his first name and jumped up? The President, obviously not knowing what Koff looked like, pointed to Thomma, and Thomma promptly asked a question that the President did not answer. Then when Lynne Sweet was called on to ask the last question of the presser, she pointed out to Obama that Steve Koff had not gotten to ask his question, Obama called on the real Steve Koff and he asked the question that Obama had already answered when Obama gave his non-answer to Steven Thomma--about the Cleveland Clinic. Note: Steve Koff is from Cleveland and Steve Thomma is not so the answer Obama gave to Thomma does not make sense unless it was meant to be the answer to Steve Koff's pre-arranged question.

This morning on Fox News Sunday Gibbs essentially admitted that Obama had been prepped on the Gates arrest kerfluffle pre-press conference. Stupidly, Obama must have rehearsed his stupid answer.

From the police report, it appears that the only persons present at the the time of the alleged "your mama" comment were Crowley, Gates, and probably Figueroa (since Crowley mentions Figueroa standing behind him at an earlier point). Crowley did have a radio on him, since he mentions having used it to transmit information to EEC or other responding officers (including making a report that he was with someone who appeared to be a resident but was uncooperative).

However, I'd like to see a news story stating specifically that the radio was actually transmitting the entire conversation throughout. Not saying that didn't happen, but all I've seen reported is that there are recordings of radio transmissions from Crowley.

I noticed that both Gates and Dowd are working feverishly to rehabilitate Gates and his tales.

As the daughter of a police detective, I always prefer to side with the police. But this time, I’m struggling.

Actually, she isn't. Her dad isn't paying for her bread and butter. Progressive Jew, Manhattanite Maven to the publishing world he sees his friend Prof Gates in regularly, and uber-Democrat Pinch Sulzberger - is. Even if she was inclined to, and likely not at that, this is "clap your flippers and bark like a seal for Pinch time" for Dowd, and she is smart enough to know it.

Being obnoxious isn’t a crime....No matter how odd or confrontational Henry Louis Gates Jr. was that afternoon, he should not have been arrested once Sergeant Crowley ascertained that the Harvard professor was in his own home.

That will come as a relief to all those who worry about being arrested for being belligerant and non-compliant in Their Own Homes when police are called on a domestic dispute report. Dowd writes from her assertive "Papal moral infallibility" persona..

Gates told his daughter Elizabeth in The Daily Beast: “He should have gotten out of there and said, ‘I’m sorry, sir, good luck. Loved your PBS series — check with you later!’ ”

Of course, because in Gates world, everyone lives and dies awaiting to see what refined fare PBS is offering. And in Dowd's "cops daughter" world. Because she knows that police softball games are full of the latest gossip about Masterpiece theater, the superiority of grilled eggplant rubbed with rosemary and extra virgin olive oil sipped with Perrier, or the minutea of the 40 years of endless "Civil Rights History" specials PBS buys from Gate's crowd.

tracked down Gates by phone at J.F.K. on Friday after he had talked to the president and agreed to go to the White House for a symbolic beer with the man he labeled “a rogue policeman.” Gates, coughing from a cold he picked up in China, said he wondered if perhaps “fate and history chose me for this event.”

Why of course Maureen has Gates on speedial. Don't they summer close to one another on the Vineyard? And of course Gates would feel Global History had somehow chosen him to deliver the upcoming "Teaching Moment".And is anyone surprised Dowd HAD to bring up the "Chinese cough" alibi Gates proffered as TRUE, TRUE! Why the poor harmless 5 7" man WAS too sick to raise his voice to a cop!

Concluding her story: “I haven’t quite decided,” he said between coughs, “if I’m up to that right now.”

One mention of the alledged Chinese vicegrip on Gates vocal cords wasn't enough. Dowd had to drop the anvil. Just as I'm sure she thinks "wryly" in relation to new charges that Crowley lied about "Ya Momma!!" - was so subtle....

“Does it sound logical that I would talk about the mother of a big white guy with a gun?” he asked. “I’m 5-7 and 150 pounds. I don’t walk on ice, much less (expletive) with some cop in my kitchen. I don’t want another hip replacement.”

Dowd may at times admit white people act stupidly, but she will never, ever cross Pinch Sulzberger by suggesting that Great Black men ever do so. (I remember watching a few "Cops" episodes where dumb or just dumb for the moment white or black numbnuts mouthed off to white or black cops the size of William "the refrigerator" Perry. Impressed when one of them apparantly lifted up a little black gangsta punk with one arm and slammed him on the car hood. "Bleep. bleep. you uncle tom bleep.." SLAMMMM!! "Oohhh." "You are under arrest!" SLAMMMM! "Oohhhh"

Gates sounds like a hack to me. Via Powerline, this rather sharp critique of Gates' shoddy work in his Lincoln book, by Sean Wilentz in The New Republic. Sections IV-VI detail how Gates fabricated Lincoln's rationale for the Emancipation Proclamation and the recruiting of black soldiers during the Civil War, tying it to a book by Geroge Livermore that wasn't even published when the bill was enacted. He ignores facts he finds inconvenient, and misses entirely huge influences on Lincoln's thinking (like Congress).

The fact that Gates' book was praised in the NY Review of Books isn't surprising, but it's hard to refute Wilentz's well-sourced criticisms. Wilentz in this response to criticisms of his essay, neatly summarizes his problems with Gates' scholarship. (Scroll down to get to the section responding to Gates.)

Montagne Mointaigne said... Skip Gates hates white people so much he married a white woman. Ah sure, that proves nothing. He's probably a racist.

And Dowd said...And Gates says that if anyone thinks he’s a fiery black militant, they’ve got the wrong guy, considering he married a white woman, has mixed-race daughters and has white blood himself.

Gates, by his writings, is no black militant. But plenty of them have felt marriage to or having white bitches on the side subjugated to them is quite...liberating. Especially if they are blonde. WEB Du Bois, Malcom X. Imarau Baraka, Stokely Carmichael, Julian Bond, several black panthers...love de white bitches..Black political activists in academia like Gates, similarly seem strangely drawn to de white girl. No doubt from the paucity of black women in academia that "truly understand them and are their intellectual peers.." Then again, after writing and studying long hours about the authentic black experience, the authentic black history.....it's probably good to see a non-black face when you're done. Otherwise, it must be like dragging your work home with you into your private life. And scholars like their trophies as much as firebrand activists or NFL backs do.

I knew the cop could not be taken seriously when he said "Gates insulted my mother" 4 or 5 times in a 20 minute radio interview. No one takes "yo mama" as a serious insult of one's mother. The cop purports to be an adult; in reality, he's an authoritarian thug.

What really shocks is the number of supporters this authoritarian thug has received for arresting a rude person in his own home.

lapetus - You don't want to even know what I think about race in America. While I think Cedarford is an anti-semitic asshole, he's 100% dead-on when it comes to how African-Americans relate to everyone else.

Stop with the ad-hominems. I'll pile on every time he makes an anti-Jewish remark.

For all those who keep bleating and re-bleating the little mantra about how out of line Crowley was for arresting Gates "in his own home just for being rude," hellloo-o? All the lawyers on this board, am I the only one who does dom rel work? Cops on domestic calls arrest obnoxious and belligerent people in their own homes just for being obnoxious and belligerent all the time. It's _exactly_ what they do to "diffuse" [sic] the situation.

And it also reminds me of the time I was in front of the judge at sentencing with a client who had been so arrested and charged, with a plea deal that woulda got my client off with a little slap on the hands and a completely suspended sentence, when the judge uttered those fateful words to the client, "before I sentence you is there anything you would like to say for yourself?" Which gave Mr. Client the opportunity to go off on the cop again. "He had no right to talk to me the way he did and arrest me, treat me like that in my own home, he's a nazi and a jackboot, ...", etc., etc., etc. The judge listened and then finally said, "Now I know exactly what happened between you and the officer. You flunked the personality test. And you just flunked it again. I am setting aside the plea agreement because I am not obligated to follow it. Thirty days in the county jail." And the uniformed deputies were smiling when they led him off.

garage mahal said... Anyone know if Gates apologized yet for trying to get into his house for Christ's sake? Cheney's lawyer apologized the day after his face got in the way of Cheney's shotgun.

Unlike you, garage, the lawyer was smart enough to know that he violated hunting rules and protocol, and was honest enough to admit he had walked into another hunter's line of fire, causing the accident.

Happens in the military, too. My nephew's unit in 2006 had a guy run right in front of the squad SAW during an engagement and had the lower part of his right leg chopped off by a burst. Hopped back to the medic, stump gushing and a buddy carrying his foot - saying he was stupid and it was his fault, he fucked up.

Shame Gates can't man up like Cheney's lawyer and a dumbass corporal could.

On today’s Fox News Sunday, presidential press secretary Robert Gibbs admitted President Obama had been prepared to answer questions about the Henry Louis Gates arrest at his press conference last week. Bret Baier, filling in for regular host Chris Wallace, asked Gibbs, “Before Wednesday’s news conference, did you prepare [the president] for a question about Henry Gates’s arrest in Cambridge?”

“Well, look,” said Gibbs, “Let’s just say it’s safe to say we went over a whole lot of topics that we thought might come up, and certainly this was a topic that was, has been in the news . . .” He then went on to try to un-ring the bell by repeating the line that the president “hadn’t calibrated his words well,” and blah, blah, blah, beer at the White House, blah, blah, blah.

It's amazing to me that our media elite can spend days and days and days wondering aloud whether, or not, some Cambridge cop MIGHT be a racist, but are strangely silent on the fact that charity-scammer Gates is undeniably racist.

Of the two it is, after all, Mr. Gates who runs a business that illegally refuses to hire Hispanics or Asians (The Root).

Mr. Gates is an undeniable racist - who is violating the laws in our country that protect people from racial discrimination in hiring. He's allowed to get away with it because he has friends in the White House protecting him.

And yet, Maureen Dowd spends hours and hours and hours trying to decide whether or not the Cambridge beat cop, standing right next to a fellow black police offer, is a racist or not.

@Alex 4:27: Well, my friend, if you're such an terrific self-appointed gatekeeper for this blog, get your ass in gear 'cause you missed one of those trademark Cedarford "remarks" already today. And while you're at, buzz off.

Racism in today's stupid definition is a creature of the needs of soap opera narrative. That's why Gates uses it. It gets all the public debate because that's all the media will put out, and that's all the media will put out because that's the only thing that brings in their reliable target audience.

Actually technically speaking racism is the "belief in the superiority of one's race above others". it does not imply the possession of power to inflict harm on the object of your ire. Going by that definition Obama and Rev Wright are racists.

What are the legal issues surrounding the release of the tapes? Why doesn't the department just release them so that everyone can hear for themselves, and have this matter settled? Gates now claims he didn't talk about the police officer's mama. Did he or didn't he?

I would think an intelligent man like a Harvard professor would realize how suspicious it looks to force your way into a home, even if it is your own home.

A passerby might not know that. At least, that's what seems to have happened in this case. It is unfortunate that the fact he was black probably added to the passerby's suspicions. But that has nothing to do with the cop. Even if you believe that arresting Professor Gates was crossing the line, that doesn't change the fact that everything that happened up to that point was Gates' fault. He was the asshole, he refused to be cooperative. He behaved belligerently to someone who had every right to be suspicious and to be investigating.

And to top it off, he, one of the nations elites, a man who gets to hang out with the President, is claiming he was victimized by a middle-class dude that makes a fraction of his income. Talk about a sense of entitlement.

CedarI suppose there is a chance the shot in the face went down as Cheney and his layer described it. But a pretty small one considering it's Cheney were talking about. I pheasant hunt every year with a party of 6-8 guys, and are only rule is know where every one in the party is at all times. That way, nobody gets shot in the face.

OhioAnne said..."Obama needs work on his conflict resolution skills before real nukes are involved."

Sadly, this is all too true.

North Korea, Iran, et al. Those are the racists we need to be concerned about. Why? Because those are the racists who have Obama's number. They know he is weak. They know that he has never accomplished anything beyond "community organizer" and getting elected to several offices where, again, he has accomplished nothing.

We have a weak leader in an extremely dangerous world. Unfortunately, Biden was probably right -- he will soon be tested in a way similar to young JFK during the Cuban missile crisis. Thank god JFK had Harvard professor, Robert McNamara in 1962.

Obama has nothing.

He hates being a war president. He doesn't want to even consider the concept of victory in Afghanistan. His greatest concern right now -- how to have a beer with cop he insulted, to whom he owes an apology he lacks the character and personal constitution to make.

I was once arrested by a black Cambridge cop for taking a left turn at a no left turn intersection.

My insurance and plates had expired,,oops.

I was wearing Prada from head to toe.

I shared a cell with a bunch of guys who were transferred from Bridgeport State Prison. There was one toilet in the cell. I had to be there for like 2 hours until I saw the judge. The other guys in the cell were saying that they could get a lot of money for my shoes. It was not fun.

And yes, guys were shitting on the toilet which had no walls. Thank God I didn't have to pinch a loaf.

"Gates isn't a racist. Practically nobody these days is a racist. Gates is an opportunist."

If I ran a business, and refused to hire Hispanics, I think Mr. Gates would rightly call me a racist.

If I ran a business, and refused on principle to hire black people, I think Mr. Gates would point to that business as proof that racism was alive and well in America.

Mr. Gates is a racist.

He runs a business.

That business, on principle, refuses to hire Asians. It refuses to hire Hispanics. It is a business predicated on the notion that Hispanics are incapable of writing about the black experience in America.

That's racist ideology.

It's indistinguishable from what the Ku Klux Klan represents.

He can break our laws, though, with impunity. Because he has friends in the White House who will protect him from prosecution.

Obama was sending a signal to the Cambridge PD. "Lay off my friends, or else."

On Hillbillies as an insult, I actually know a few bona fide hillbillies out of West Virginia, and just as with any other group of humans, there are some very fine people within that group, and some assholes too.

I think many white liberals use hillbillies- along with the similar and overlapping rednecks and southerners- in the same way white racists use black people: as a group that one has license to cast aspersions on, and which, through comparison, allows them to think of their own group as superior- to one other group, at least.

Get the stove red-hot, then the pot, then the oil, just enough to cover the bottom to smoking before dumping a pre-measured 1/2 cup of corn seeds. Cover and shake the pot to coat the seeds with oil. They should pop within seconds and finish all at once. If they don't, they're probably old seeds without sufficient internal moisture, or the oil wasn't hot enough. Dump into a bowl immediately when popping ceases. No messing around or it burns.

Melt a nob of butter in the hot pot and drizzle immediately as it's melting using a knife to hold back the nob and to direct the drips. Dump the pre-grated cheese and seasonings on top, they'll filter down as you go.

Brian, "Althouse Hillbillies" has nothing to do with West Virginia or the South.

Yes- obviously you're using the term as a metaphor. I didn't think that you thought that the Althouse commentators were all literally hillbillies.

So yes, you're using hillbillies as a metaphor- an insult. Is this different than the teenage use of "gay" as a metaphor for bad things? I'm a little lost on how a term can be used as a metaphorical insult and not also be an insult to those to whom the term can be literally applied.

What are the legal issues surrounding the release of the tapes? Why doesn't the department just release them so that everyone can hear for themselves, and have this matter settled? Gates now claims he didn't talk about the police officer's mama. Did he or didn't he?

Only the tapes know for sure!

Because the cops are going to protect Crowley as much as possible. It's that simple and obvious.

> “Does it sound logical that I would talk about the mother of a big white guy with a gun?” he asked. “I’m 5-7 and 150 pounds. I don’t walk on ice, much less (expletive) with some cop in my kitchen. I don’t want another hip replacement.”

All that sounds reasonable enough, except... we know he DID mouth off to the cop at least a little. So... by his logic none of this should have happened.

more and more i think this guy is in the wrong, but i confess there are enough unknowns for it to go the other way.

Wow, you guys get all protective of the hillbillies and go all PC on my ass. Here is a clue. You are not born an Althouse Hillbilly. You just choose to be one.Alex, you are to funny. You write racist stuff like "Obama shucking and jiving" then get all PC defensive about your fellow Althouse Hillbillies. You are a riot.

"So yes, you're using hillbillies as a metaphor- an insult. Is this different than the teenage use of "gay" as a metaphor for bad things?"Yes, it is different. People are born gay. They are not born to be hillbillies. See the difference?

Change "Skippy Gates" to "Newt Gingrich" and make Sgt. Crowley a highly decorated black police officer. Inverse the epithets hurled at the Sergeant to reflect the new color chart, but retain ALL other known facts of this case.

Does anyone here seriously think that Gingrich would be invited to the White House to "teach" Sgt. Crowley about racism? A situation where the media would be silently standing off to the side, editorially?

Anyone?

Hello?

This isn't a deplorable situation where basically good men made mistakes. Not even close. Shame on those who try to loft that turd, too.

We're in a lot of trouble.

I know this is unfair to Mr. Gingrich. I wasn't able to come up with a simulacrum to Mr. Gates, since the profession of beloved and celebrated race hustler is strangely a mostly a non-white avocation.

"Because the cops are going to protect Crowley as much as possible. It's that simple and obvious."

I would have thought you'd have tired of beating this drum by now.

It wasn't Crowley who was forced to contradict everything he had said up to that point when the Cambridge PD said they were thinking about releasing the tape: it was both Gates and Obama who couldn't rush to the microphones fast enough to say the exact opposite of what they had been saying the day before.

Gosh. I wonder what could possibly have so radically have changed their minds? It couldn't possibly be the spectre of the world hearing what was on the tapes while your ass was completely exposed, now could it?

How interesting it must be to live as you do in a world where logic has no meaning...

Yes, it is different. People are born gay. They are not born to be hillbillies. See the difference?

No, not really. Most hillbillies, or Appalachians, to use the preferred term, are born Appalachians. And to really absorb the culture, they need to remain in Appalachia for the next 5 to 15 years. But this is not a matter of choice, so far as I'm aware.

I'm sorry if you think this is too PC. It seems odd to me though that a lefty who presumably is against all forms of racism would nonetheless find it appropriate to stereotype a people based on regionalism- with maybe a little bit of racism thrown in.

Yeah, I told him to act like he was sorry and to not say anything except that he was sorry. Do that and you're golden is what I remember saying to him. And that is what he started off with. "Judge, I'm sorry this happened. But I DO have something I want to say,...." Then he unloaded. I cut him off by interrupting him once and brushed his sleeve to signal him and make sure I had his attention, but he just went right on even louder. I think that just ticked the judge off even more at him.

It's something I've always worried about, having a judge throw out a plea deal. You don't really know if they're going to do that until after your client pleads guilty, so it's always a dicey moment. It's the only time that has happened to me, although I've had a couple of other judges threaten to do it.

G Joubert...I remember a particularly bad DUI, with accident, and with hit and run. The Defendant had a frustrated but wealthy father who hired me to keep him out of jail. He could not really remember anything that had happened. As you know, it is getting harder and harder to do get these plea bargains as the MADD mothers are getting more serious everyday. But we lucked out with a friend in the Solicitors office and a friend on the bench and got him a plea for mostly money and 1 day's jail time. At sentencing the weasley client started to complain that his wrists were still hurting from the handcuffs, as if that would get him some more sympathy. Fortunately the Judge and Solicitor felt enough sympathy for me to ignore this righteous citizens complaints about bad Police conduct.Reality is stranger than fiction most days.

I don't see anything in the process of becoming a Harvard professor that would make it all that unlikely for a fool to navigate. There are fools in all human endeavors. In fact, I would expect that being black, liberal, and cranky are all attributes that make it more likely. Those traits are all encouraged and supported by the system and the people who man the toll booths along that path. And for a variety of reasons they demand a lower toll from those who possess them.

Something just occurred to me -- According to Obama, this is supposed to be a "teaching moment" about racism. So why is it that he invited Crowley over for, of all things, a beer? To talk about racism? Why not a White House dinner? Why not tea?

Is it because, you know, Crowley is an Irish name, and hey, you know about those Irish and their alcohol. Give them a little liquor and everything will be ok.

What Obama did is the equivalent of a white President inviting a black person to the White House to share some watermelon and learn a little about racism.

He is 57 years old which puts his birth year at 1952. He grew up in West Virginia. He missed the civil rights efforts by a half dozen or more years and I think it highly unlikely that he was called the word that only african americans can use on a regular basis. If at all.

I'm going to make a rare categorical statement here:

Anyone who thinks someone born in 1952 could never have heard the word "nigger"used on a routine basis is flat-out ignorant.

And anyone who thinks a **black** person born in 1952 could never have been called that is either stupid or dishonest,or both. (Ignorant, that sort of person has transcended, and not in a good way.)

If the staff of Harvard Magazine--the very next door neighbors and colleagues of Skip Gates--don't know who Gates is, why should Officer Crowley?

Why is no one deploring the racism of Lucia Whalen and likely all the other staff of Harvard Magazine looking out at that rock star faculty member that surely everyone knows?! Who has been their next door neighbor for years?!?!

Gates is half Irish and he and Crowley both are descendents of Niall of the Nine Hostages...they're kin. So that alcohol is for Gates too. Maybe Obama will offer him a quart bottle of Colt 45 in a paper sack. And offer to step out back and smoke a Kool.

Actually, racism would be: "Because of your inferior DNA, you were not endowed by your Creator with certain unalienable Rights."

OK, I suppose that's fine so far as it goes, Meade. But with all due respect, and I do mean that, it rather sets the clock of history at a rather arbitrary point and doesn't take to account a much more longstanding human failure.

I really hope those tapes caught Gates yelling "yo mama" 'cause I'd love it for Harvard Dons to have to obey the same public nuisance laws as everybody else. It seems that Dowd believes that being loud and abusive on a quiet residential street is protected speech. She may be right, if liberals and libertarians are winning the day, but I hope not, because I know what would happen if I started mouthing off to a cop just trying to do his job. It's called being melanin-challenged in America.

There are (at least) two separate pronunciations of the word 'diffuse', depending on whether it's a verb or an adjective. The verb form can be quite similar in pronunciation to 'defuse', although probably not identical for most people (defuse has more of a long e sound). The adjective is completely different, though. It's pronounced with an 's' sound instead of a 'z' sound and indicates the state of being spread widely.

It seems that Dowd believes that being loud and abusive on a quiet residential street is protected speech.

I'll let that one speak for itself as the broad-brush(and, yes, lacking-in-nuance) statement it is.

For myself, I support the right of, for example, our local tea-partiers to make all the noise they want, loud or not, and even when they're causing a ruckus on normally quiet streets, residential or otherwise.

But yes, I absolutely am drawing a parallel w/r/t the hapless AST, whose definition of protected speech, as stated and with all its implications because of how it was stated, would be serious threat to the freedom of speech, if widely adopted.

"Did you really just claim that being black makes it more likely to be a fool?"

I don't think he said that. I think what he pretty clearly claimed was that in the march from birth to university professor it's less likely for a black fool to be eliminated along the way than it is for a white fool. He made no claim on how many fools started the journey on each side in the first place. It's actually a comment on the people and policies that run the universities, not the professors who work there.

I think his point is that personal traits that would weed out your "average" white candidate along the way are given less weight by administrators when evaluating a black candidate. Because when your primary value is to be 'diverse' and there is a shortage of black candidates, you can't afford to be too picky.

So, if you want to argue with him, I'd say this point would be the nature of the argument. Not your erroneous point above.

It's basically the Jayson Blair story. The New York Times knew of Blair's questionable ethics and personal failings but promoted him and kept him on the job long after it should have because they thought it looked good for them to have a black person featured so prominently. A good argument can be made (and was made in the follow-up on that story) that a white person in the same circumstance would have been long gone much earlier.

Anyone who thinks someone born in 1952 could never have heard the word "nigger"used on a routine basis is flat-out ignorant.

ITA and meant to say something earlier and was distracted by the Hillbilly thing (btw, I've been thinking lately about how unkind it is too make fun of people by saying they don't wear any shoes..since the reason they wouldn't have worn shoes was the abject poverty they lived in).

Perhaps your reading is jammed. I suggested that it is unlikely he heard the word that cannot be spoken by any other than African Americans "on a regular basis." He claims in one of his writings that he heard the word so much he thought it might be his name. This is, of course, bullshit. My comment is a quite different statement than he never heard the word. I, for example, was born in 1945. By 1963 I was involved in the civil rights movement in the south where I grew up. I had my face cracked open more than once marching in demonstrations. Henry Gates, Jr. was 11 and he was not getting his clock cleaned, was not marching in demonstrations and was not in the deep south. He was in West Virginia in grade school. My premise was not that such language was not used, but rather that Henry Gates, Jr. missed the civil rights movement, missed the violence and living as a middle class kid in West Virginia likely missed the racial slurs you think formed the vocabulary of hillbillies like me who went on to teach in a historically black college in Georgia doubtless so I could bully black people. Go rent some more movies to help you better understand the craven hillbillies and leave the reading to the more focused among us.

Michael wrote: "...you think formed the vocabulary of hillbillies like me ..."

Michael, you just made that up out of whole clothe. I said nothing of the kind, period.

Growing up in the '60s in small-town Indiana and Illinois, I, a white girl, heard the word "nigger" used quite a bit. And as late as the mid to late '70s, I heard it bandied about even in a more populous area, in Delaware, when people got heated up at the prospect of court-ordered busing in New Castle County.

You said it was "highly unlikely" that Gates was called that "on a regular basis" and added "if at all." That's what I called you on.

Don't project all that hillybilly crap on me. I never used that term, and, frankly, I think L.E. Lee is a bit of an ass for continuing to throw that out.

Given that Whalen didn't say the men were black (she did say, in response to questions from the dispatcher, that one **might** be Hispanic, but that she couldn't really see enough to tell), it seems to me that Crowley didn't go to that call with the mindset that he was looking for black men.

There were people who did speculate about Whalen and whether she was being racist (something I don't accept, because even if she had mentioned race, those are the sorts of questions dispatchers ask). But it seems to me those people were doing so based on information in the police report, which turned out to be misleading.

At least one place I went to today said that the report wasn't written in a misleading fashion (inadvertently, or whatever), but rather that people were misreading it.

All I can say is that I used to do some police reporting (no, I don't hate the police: quite the opposite; so don't jump to that conclusioon, either), which included going to police stations and looking at police reports and frequently interviewing police officers, as well. And I edited hundreds of cop briefs and other crime stories over the years.

I know how I would have written up a cop brief based on how that report was written, and how most reporters would have.

I'd say "misleading" is more apt than "misreading." Which OF COURSE doesn't speak to the report-writer's intent, either way, absent more information (including how police reports are typically written there--protocol varies--and how that that particular report writer usually writes up the paperwork).